Re: [PATCH 19/20] drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/skge.c: fix error return code

Joe Perches
2012-10-05T00:09:55Z

On Thu, 2012-10-04 at 14:54 -0400, David Miller wrote:
> From: Peter Senna Tschudin <peter.senna@gmail.com>
> > On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 8:23 PM, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> >> We want to know the implications of the bug being fixed.
> >> Does it potentially cause an OOPS? Bad reference counting and thus
> >> potential leaks or early frees?
> >>
> >> You have to analyze the implications and ramifications of the bug
> >> being fixed. We need that information.

You are asking for deeper level analysis that may not
be reasonably possible from the robotic patch fixed
by a robotic piece of a bit of code correction via a
static analysis.

> >> It's just "bad error code, this is the script that fixed it, kthx,
> >> bye" which is pretty much useless for anaylsis.

Which may be all but impossible but for the handful of
folks that know all the gory/intimate details of the
original bit of code.

> What does it potentially cause the caller to do? Will it potentially
> treat an error as a success and as a result register an object
> illegally?
>
> Real analysis please. The text you provided above is basically still
> robotic and could be used to describe any error code return fix.

Right, it's useful to attempt but may be infeasible in
practice.